


The Ghosts of Her History

by yoshizora



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Genre: F/F, spoilers for the final chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 16:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13391367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: To live, to forget, and to cling so futilely.





	The Ghosts of Her History

**Author's Note:**

> at first i wanted to write Klaus's trial for Mòrag, but then i also wanted to write something Brighid-centric for a change of pace, so i mashed the two ideas together

Everything goes dark once more.

She can’t be fooled by _illusions_ so easily. A hazy fog persists at the edges of her mind, urging her to succumb, but Brighid is keenly aware that all is not as it seems.

The others…

The things they said had struck with persistence, though all unable to hit their mark. While Brighid knows to stay on guard, it’s been taxing nonetheless. Perhaps that’s why she makes the mistake of letting herself slip when she finds herself in a very familiar place, one that is most definitely not Elysium.

Her heart skips a beat. It’s a room she hasn’t seen in quite a while. Mòrag’s. Memories wash over her tiring mind and Brighid slowly enters— the carpet beneath her feet, the smell of Mòrag’s perfumes and books, it’s all too real.

 _But it isn’t_ , she whispers to herself, and the fog clears just a bit.

But Mòrag is there, facing the window, and Brighid’s relief at seeing her is much too strong for her to overcome. Facing all those things ( _illusions_ ) alone without her Driver had been quite an ordeal. She isn’t quite certain if she can doubt that gentle gaze or the sensation of their shared ether flowing between them, even if it’s clear that there’s no way they’re actually back in Mor Ardain.

“Brighid…” Mòrag turns to her.

She’s real. She’s absolutely real.

“Lady Mòrag,” Brighid breathes out, one hand over her chest. “Are you alright?”

“No injuries. And you?”

She nods. “Someone is toying with our minds.”

“Yes, I had surmised as much.” Her brows pinch together. “You’ve seen the others, have you not? But they weren’t _them._ ”

Her shoulders relax, tension she hadn’t been aware of shrinking away. Things would be fine now. She’s back with Mòrag, and they’d be able to face whatever this is together.

“They said some rather disturbing things.”

“To you as well, hm…” Mòrag looks out the window, over that perfectly replicated scene of Alba Cavanich and all its people busying about in the streets. “Well, I won’t ask you for the grittier details.”

“I… thank you.”

Brighid takes her place beside her. For a long while they stand there in comfortable silence, gazing out the window just as they’d done so many times before. The carpet beneath her feet and the smell of Mòrag’s perfumes and books are real tangible things that stir a yearning feeling within her chest.

A small, small voice cries out in the back of her mind, but Brighid can’t hear it. When she looks to Mòrag, she sees her holding a book.

Her journal.

“Lady Mòrag—“

“It’s a test,” she softly says, lightly stroking the cover with her fingertips. “I don’t know what for, but that is what it is.”

“O— of course. That was one of my hypotheses, as well.”

Mòrag bows her head, now feeling the worn spine of the journal. “Every test has a meaning and an answer. Perhaps deciphering those would break us free from this illusion. It had been… frustrating, admittedly, being unable to do anything but listen and fight and run. Especially without you. I’ll admit, I’ve reached an impasse.”

“We’ll overcome it _together_ ,” Brighid says. She’s soaring on the confidence that carries them both as one, as one of the most powerful duos in the entirety of Alrest. She gently touches Mòrag’s arm for assurance, but frowns when her gaze turns back down to her journal. “By the way, is that real?”

“Likely not.” Mòrag is staring at it, running her fingers along its edges. “But.”

“But?”

“What does this journal mean to you, Brighid?”

This time, it’s her turn to scrunch her eyebrows together in confusion. Brighid pulls her hand back and folds her arms over her stomach. “Well, I suppose… everything. Without the things I’ve written in there, I wouldn’t be able to truly understand _myself._ ”

“I see.” Mòrag’s grip on the book tightens ever so slightly. “Do you remember the first time I had brazenly asked to see an entry, when I was young?”

Brighid chuckles uneasily. “I was quite offended. I didn’t understand it was harmless curiosity on your part.”

“It feels so long ago.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “We’ve come a long way since then, you and I. I’d like to imagine we know each other better than the back of our own hands, by now.”

“Hah, and I feel the same.”

Something in the air changes.

“Do you really?”

The question hits her like a bucket of ice water. Brighid’s flames flicker and she takes an uncertain step back, away from Mòrag, who’s still holding the journal with an iron grip. _You’ll ruin the cover_ , she almost wants to say, even if it’s supposedly a fake.

“What kind of question is that? Of course I do.” Her voice wavers when she sees the look in Mòrag’s eyes. Hurt. Betrayal. Just like the…

Ah.

Brighid takes another step back. “You’re not the real Mòrag.”

Mòrag’s lip curls, baring teeth. “Funny. I was thinking the same of you, Brighid.”

They glare with suspicion, stances tense and ready to spring. Then Mòrag suddenly chuckles, and looks back down to the journal.

“Why do you cling to your past so stubbornly, Brighid? Is your entire self so dependent on the events of a history long-gone? Is there nothing to you but a shell that holds onto forgotten feelings?”

"What—?” Brighid reaches for the swords that had been with her, but realizes she only has one. The other one is upon Mòrag’s hip. Her heart is racing, disbelief crawling across her skin but unable to shake her. “Of course I want to remember things. Anyone would suffer from knowing that they’ve lost so many experiences!”

“Hah… I envy your privilege of reincarnation, actually.”

“You would call that a _privilege?!_ ”

“Yes. I would,” Mòrag coolly says. She turns to fully face Brighid, and holds up the journal. “You’re so concerned with preserving every passing moment that you don't look at what is right before you. How can you walk forward if all you can do is look to your past?”

“That’s not what it’s like,” Brighid snaps. Her chest feels tight. The flow of ether between them has come to a standstill, a distinctly uncomfortable sensation. “I just want to be the Brighid I always have been for five hundred years. My identity is all I will ever have, don’t you understand?”

Mòrag lowers the journal. “After I die, you won’t remember me. I understand that. Someday, you will be awakened by a new Driver."

"As it has always been," she says, numbly.

"Exactly. All that we have, all that we _were_ , will be nothing but pretty poetry in your book. Those feelings will never come back to you, Brighid. And in that regard? You won’t really be the same person.”

The words pierce her in quick succession like a rain of blades. That tightness in her chest is making it difficult to breathe. It hurts, truly hurts, and Brighid finds herself backing off even more until she hits the wall.

Mòrag looks pained as well, grief and fury and sadness all swirling in a maelstrom within her eyes. “I will die and take you along with me. But you? You will rise to live again. And instead of truly living, you will take ahold of the ghosts of your history, and your new Driver will suffer for it along with you.”

“That’s not…”

“Whose Blade are you?” Mòrag asks, shoulders slumping with sadness. “If you can never get over your previous Drivers?”

“I- I’m sorry, Lady Mòrag, I never meant—“

“No. I understand. Perhaps it was my fault as well, for being unable to turn your gaze away from your past,” she softly says, and Brighid feels her heart beginning to tear. “Heh, I can only hope that you dedicate a good page to my memory, before I die.”

Everything she says makes sense but doesn’t. Brighid breathes hard, gripping the hilt of the one whipsword in her possession, head spinning and core crystal singing with the absence of their link. She’s wrong. The past doesn’t define her. But… the proof is right there, within the book that Mòrag holds, and Brighid can’t come to terms with the realization that she’d always had one foot in that grave behind her that would never be filled.

She’ll live on, and on, and on, and forget so many things, and no amount of careful recordings and readings would ever bring back the true feelings of the moments that would come and go.

Even these feelings for Mòrag will fade away. She clutches her core crystal and quietly sobs.

“I don’t want to forget you…”

“But you will.”

She feels a tug of ether and her head sharply snaps up. Mòrag is holding her whipsword up to the book. Panic slams into Brighid.

“ _No—!_ ”

She lunges, but it’s too late. The book is burning.

All her memories, burning.

Her entire being, burning.

Silent tears crawl down Mòrag’s face as the room begins to spin. Brighid desperately reaches for her but—

Lights.

“You guys—“ Rex starts. Everyone is there, and Brighid’s panic is swept into a jolting clarity that spreads from her head to her feet as she looks at everyone else, breath already steadying and the spinning coming to a stop.

Mòrag is standing beside her, looking to Brighid with concern.

“R-Rex…” Nia stammers.

“Why’re we all here…?” Zeke is the next to speak. “I thought I was…”

_I only wished… to examine the shapes of your hearts._

“That voice—“

It wasn’t real. None of it was real. It was all indeed the Architect’s doing. She wills her heart to stop racing so quickly lest Mòrag sense it, sorting out all her jumbled thoughts. Her journal hadn’t actually burned, and that wasn’t actually Mòrag saying all those things. Was it…? Surely not.

But for just a split second, when she glances at Mòrag, she sees a glimmering wetness in the corners of her eyes that no one else would notice. She offers a silent nod and Brighid nods back, both warmed by their ether link. Yet a small, small wound remains, unnoticed and brushed aside, to be confronted another time. 

And so they turn to face the Architect, ready to see what comes next.


End file.
